I would be upset about the long-term implications of having three of the Big 10's four premier programs in the same division, because Penn State won't be down forever. However, by the time they are good again, we're likely looking at changing the divisions once more.

Yes, I believe they are. It will be interesting to see who we get for our first cross over games. I assume that the cross overs switch every two years still, right? A home and away with three teams then you switch?

of cross-division games will work something like that, but it will be interesting as to how they make this work for IU and Purdue vs. how it will work for the rest of the teams that don't have a "protected crossover" game. It only makes sense that since both IU and Purdue have 7 locked-in games each B1G season (everyone else has just 6 locked-in B1G games), that somehow those two outliers rotate the remainder of the teams from the opposite division on a 2-2-2 basis, meaning seeing those teams less often.

Confusing? To strip it down to the essentials, Michigan (and everyone else in the East) will see Purdue less often than everyone else in the West.

(and most of us would assume this not to be the case), I tried my best to figure out the frequency of Michigan playing each West Division team, and I'm pretty sure that this is what it works out to be:

That doesn't quite add up. We play 3 games a year against the other division so 63 games in 21 years. You have us only playing 61 games.

Let's see, from the Purdue perspective they play only 2 games each year against the other 6 teams in the other division [since 1 of their 3 non-division games is tied to Indiana]. So 1 in 3 years we will be playing against Purdue so 7 in 21 years. But there are two leftover games. I believe that just means that we will play 9 against 4 of those teams in a 21 year cycle and 10 against 2 of those teams.

I think the way it will work is that they schedule out Purdue and Indiana in 3 year cycles and then repeat with the home games flipped away. Then you start filling in the other teams randomly or whatever but because of the Purdue Indiana thing you will start to repeat 2 of the 3 teams that you played in Year 1 in Year 3 but will not see the 4th team that you played in Year 1 until Year 4. I think. Might have to fire up Excel to verify but expansion will change it again anyway. The actual frequency of playing each of the other 6 teams should be 4/9ths of every years. Take 6 teams * (4/9) = 24/9 + (3/9)ths for Purdue = 27/9 = 3 games a year. So it is like a 9 year cycle. Or really an 18 year cycle if you count home and away in even quantities. I think. We play Purdue 6 times in 18 years and play the other 6 teams 8 times in 18 years. That adds up. So a home game against Purdue every 6 years and a home game against Nebraska (or the other teams) every 4.5 years.

If they are planning to balance out the schedule, it will have to be a 9-year (18-year) cycle. Once the 9-game schedule starts, Michigan will play Purdue 6 times in 18 years and will play everybody else in the West 8 times in 18 years.

Oddly, they don't seem to be going with a pure rotation, though. They seem to be saying that they will match up the top teams in a division with top teams in the other division. I don't care for that one bit, and it doesn't really make much sense to me either, but it's not like it's the first time that anybody has said that about the Big Ten.

Probably not. I just read a tweet that said that you will see every team in the opposite division at least once in 4 years. That can't be done with 2 year rotations, you only get 6 in four years.

I'm not sure how it will work out exactly, especially with the IU-PU protected crossover, but I imagine for Michigan it will be some thing like:

Year 1: Minnesota (H), Nebraska, Wisco (A)

Year 2: Minnesota (A), Iowa, Northwestern (H)

Year 3: Illinois (H), Iowa, Northwestern (A)

Year 4: Illinois (A), Purdue, Wisco (H)

Year 5: Nebraska (H), Purdue, Wisco (A)

Year 6: Nebraska (A), Minnesota, Northwestern (H), etc.

That set-up kind of staggers home/away to achieve the desired effect. Of course I don't know how that system would work across 14 teams, and gets the right home-away, competitiveness-fairness balance. But I think it works.

"The trouble with quotes on the internet, is that it is often difficult to discern whether or not they are genuine" --Abraham Lincoln

thinking along the same lines as I am, but your 6-year chart does a better job of illustrating it. Using the phrase, "staggers home/away to achieve the desired effect" goes a long way in describing how the process of scheduling such an awkward set-up would work.

Very, very likely, though, that in a few years the whole thing is re-drawn with the next round(s) of expansion.

Big fan of alligning the H/A imbalance by divisional lines, and cynic that I am I was convinced that they'd blow it on this one. I'll give the Big 10 kudos when they deserve it, and they got this one right.

Will be really interesting if they go to 16 teams. That means each team will have 7 divisional games, so 3 division home games in one year and 4 home in another. So in the year when a division has only 4 conference games, half of that division will only have divisional home games.

The past is history, the future's a mystery. Being alive in this moment is a gift--that's why they call it the present.

Would give Michigan schedule good balance. MSU is probably a lock to stay at home during even years. The only question is where PSU lands. Seeing Michigan plays PSU away this year, hopefully it will stay on this schedule.

was very unpleasant since we were undefeated! Foggies 30 something yard QB run inside the 20 with seconds left...then the chip shot FG with no time left! If I remember right we had about 8 or 9 turnovers in that game!

I think the Jug is a cool trophy, but I don't see why we need to play an uncompetitive Minnesota team 100% of the time just because of it. I mean, it's not just that we win the game every year - the games are rarely ever even close. I was on campus for the 1999-2002 seasons and I can't even remember anything about the Jug games those years. Did we even play them all four years?

I think every M player should get the chance to play for the Jug at least once in his career, but that's enough.

We didn't play Minnesota in 1999 and 2000. That marked the first time we didn't play the Gophers since 1928.

I'm sure the reason you don't remember the 2001 Minnesota game was because it took place the week after Sparty got that extra second against us in East Lansing and the non holding call on them during the final play. I think everyone was still so pissed off from that game that the Minnesota game was nothing but a blur. BJ Askew was the star in that game scoring twice and we won 31-10 at the big house. The following year, we won 41-24 at the Metrodome behind Askew's running again.

"wolverinehistorian, for someone so dedicated and seemingly level headed, his grudges are monumental." ~ triangle_M

we're going to regret this and push for change. They are simply too lopsided and we've put ourselves in a position where we must defeat ohio every year if we want to make it to the B1G Championship Game and have a shot at the Playoffs.

Nebraska's conference schedule makes them the early favorite to repeat as Legends division champs IMO.

Nebraska's 2013 B1G schedule:

Home games: Illinois, Northwestern, Michigan State and Iowa

Road games: Purdue, Minnesota, Michigan, Penn State

If they hold serve at home (they should) and beat the two doormats they play on the road (Purdue and Minnesota), that leaves just two difficult-ish games for them -- road games at UM and PSU. So, 6-2 is probably a worst case scenario for the Huskers in 2013.

Meanwhile, UM has to play MSU, Northwestern, Iowa and PSU on the road and faces Nebraska and OSU in AA. The easiest road game for UM will probably be Iowa and UM has a history of struggling against the Hawkeyes in Iowa City, so I will be actually pleased if UM goes 2-2 in their conference road games. If that happens they will have to win out at home to get a tie with Nebraska (which would give UM the division)...assuming Nebraska's likely worst case scenario comes true.

This ^ is why we are better off with the new arrangement. Nobody in the new East has a built in advantage over us the way teams in the Legends Division currently do who do not play Ohio State in a given year.

Not playing Ohio State is a huge gift for NEB this year, and they may very well win the Division because of it, even if we beat them head to head.

The current system gives other teams periodic scheduling advantages over us since we have the protected crossover with ohio.

But, the solution to this is not to give them permanent scheduling advantages over us by putting them in a far easier division (Wisconsin is likely to return to the mean as we get further and further away from the Alvarez era and Nebraska is steadily losing lots of its recruitment pool by not playing Texas teams).

"If we can't beat Ohio, we don't deserve to be in the playoffs. I prefer this to the potential awkwardness of playing them twice in a row, which is looking pretty likely this year."

It's odd you would be upvoted on this, since everytime i stated I would like OSU & Michigan in different divisions no one ever liked the idea.
My point was always that if we can't beat every other team THAN Ohio, we don't deserve to play Ohio (assuming they beat everyone except us as well & make the championship).

I'd rather miss them on the schedule sometimes for the chance of beating them for the championship. I realize more people think quantity is better than quality so I'll just hope this gets revisited during the next expansion (probably within 4 years)

But you and he are proposing different things. He's talking about us being in the same division as Ohio, and thus only playing once. You're arguing for us to be separate and not playing every year, which would be a pretty radical departure from tradition.

Anyhow, a big problem with only "playing them for the championship" is that that game would be at Lucas Oil Stadium, not the Big House or Horseshoe. It's not the same to play them in an NFL stadium. The Game needs to be on campus.

I was just making the point that "earning to play someone" (which was one of his points) is important in my estimation.

To me the axis of intensity of the rivalry outweighs the axis of regularity. Of course I fully understand that if you don't have SOME regularity, it's pretty damn hard to develop a rivalry in the first place, but it's not impossible. The Red Wings aren't in the same division as Colorado, how could they ever be rivals? /s I guess I feel that after 75 yrs, The Game doesn't need regularity as much as it needs drama. That's why we all remember 2006 so well. Hell we've been pretty damn regular with East Dakota for the brown Jug and it's been so anticompetitive that no one seems to care that we're losing it.

I do agree that playing in Lucas Oil would suck to some extent, but if any two teams could transcend that bland venue, it would be Michigan vs. OSU for the Big Ten Championship.
As it is, now we'll just play for the right to play an over-rated Nebraska, fading Wisco, or cinderella Northwestern.

Eventually that Championship, including it's playoff-launching position will steal all the hype.

I have to disagree with you on somehow anything diminishing the importance of Michigan vs. Ohio State at the end of the regular season. There simply is no way that these two teams playing each other at Lucas Oil (or at any other venue, if and when the B1G decides whether to rotate the Conference Championship Game to other locations) could ever replace the spectacle of The Game being played on campus. Would I still go if that's the only place these two teams were to play in a given season? Hell yes (and I plan on making sure I'll be at Lucas for this season's CCG)! But it wouldn't be the same for the fans of each school, and I'm pretty damn sure it wouldn't be the same for the teams, the players, the coaches, the bands...everyone involved, if Michigan vs ohio only happened in the CCG.

A huge part, as most of us know, of being a college football fan, and especially of being a season ticket-holder, is that these games are first and foremost about the game itself, but also about renewing friendships with people you know thru whatever the association with your favorite school might be. Whether it be with fellow alumni, friends you always go to the games with, fellow fans you've built up friendships with simply because you've sat next to them thru some of the fiercest on-the-field battles you can imagine, people you've tailgated with for years, you look forward to that entire day/entire weekend even if they might be with someone who shares that experience with you just once every year or two.

Does this mean that we fans are the most important thing here? Not at all. But college rivalry games wouldn't be the same if the on-campus element were to be taken away. Imagine a season without Michigan vs ohio, if you can, and honestly tell me that it's not a scary thought. I'm looking forward to this November 30th and seeing/being a part of The Game for the 20th time (my 19th consecutive one at Michigan Stadium plus 1 at the horseshoe), and there is NOTHING bigger on my schedule this coming fall, including the potential 21st one the following week in Indy!

I appreciate your passion in wanting The Game to stay on campus. I'd love for it to stay on campus too! But Championships, Playoffs, and the $ that control them don't really give a shit about the wonderful tradition of college football that we obviously do. This whole discussion is predicated on the "good old days" actually being The Good Old Days®

You have a great history of watching or attending games, especially back when the M/OSU game was the defacto Big Ten championship. I guess part of my mental masturbation in discussing this is that I wish we could finally get rid of the defacto part, and make the match-up (realistically never annual) the honest to god chamionship for all the marbles.

Do you really believe younger generations are going to care as much about The Game when there is still a more important game one week later? (& then playoffs after?) M/OSU will eventually become the 4th or 5th-to-the-last-game of the season! That's pretty pathetic, but playoffs will do that all by themselves I guess.

I bring this up from time to time when certain threads mention the importance of the M/OSU game. Some people misunderstand when I say i don't want them to play every year unless they've earned it, not because I don't care, but because I respect the rivalry so much.

Ultimately it's the content of the games and the stakes they play for that are the most important for me. Sadly I don't ever see those past heights ever being reached again.

The recent history of college football rivalries suggests that your position is simply incorrect. The SEC championship game has done nothing to dull the passion of the Iron Bowl. Not playing annually killed the Oklahoma-Nebraska rivalry, even though they eventually met for the Big 12 title.

Playing annually at the end of the year is the essence of the Game's rivalry. It represents one final hurdle for the more successful team, a last chance to redeem a season for a struggling team, and an unbearable game when both teams are equally successful. It's not only about championships, it is the single measure that most defines a particular team and that creates its most enduring memory.

The old system could have killed that, since it devalued the rivalry, as both teams could plausibly progress to the championship game. Now that's not possible. The Game might be the single biggest winner in this realignment, as it protects it as the single most important game in the Big 10 every year.

Do you not realize that in the Leaders/Legends setup, we have to play OSU every year, while our division rivals don't? And then if we win the division, we could possibly play them a second time in two weeks?

I can understand being upset about the divisions if you're sad about not playing some of the West teams every year, but I can't understand how people could think this is bad for us from a competitive standpoint. This is much fairer to us than the current division. Every team in the East has to play OSU. And we only play them once a year.

Yes, and now we've ended this little unfairness by putting ourselves in the division with 2 of the other 3-4 likely elite programs over the next 20 years.

Facts are, under a better East/West division with us in the West (with State and Purdue in West and something like Illinois and NU in the East; and protected cross-over games), we'd be favorites most every year to get to Indy. Under that scenario, we just have to take care of business against every team except ohio, and we'd go to Indy. I'll take a neutral court game v ohio. Yes, that might mean we'd have to move ohio from the end of the season. I'd make that sacrifice in order to drastically improve our chances of making the Championship game and getting what probably will amount to an auto bid to the Football Final Four.

Now, under the new system, any loss to ohio means we are not going to Indy.

There is no way - absolutely no way - that the Game will ever be moved. That's non-negotiable. You do not mess around with what many consider the greatest rivalry in sports. Any proposal to move the Game is a non-starter. Fans on both sides were outraged when the idea was floated a couple years ago.

Michigan and OSU will play on the last week of the regular season. That was the starting point of the discussion. Given that fact, there are two options: play them as a cross-division game, opening up the possibility of back-to-back meetings and an imbalanced schedule for the two schools compared to their division rivals, or play them in the same division, which eliminates both issues. It's an easy decision.

In a division with Maryland, Indiana, Minnesota, Purdue, Rutgers, and Illinois. The "Cupcake Division." Because, hey, we'd go to Indy every year. Might get rocked by a team that has played some competition, but we'd be there at least. Yay.

And I seriously doubt an 11-1 Michigan team who lost to OSU isn't under consideration for the playoff depending on how the rest of the teams in the country play out. You don't have to be in the conference championship game to play in the playoff. The national champ didn't have to two years ago.

And by your reasoning losing to OSU in the championship game will knock us out of a playoff anyway, so you're basically asking us to beat Ohio twice instead of once.

Huh? And Ohio is going to have to beat us to do the same. So what? We'd pretty much have to beat them anyway in any year we would hope to win the B1G championship or our division. We'll play them every year in any alignment, so this is the best.

guh

You think we're going to complain because our schedule is too hard? I doubt it. Sure, we need to beat OSU to get to the conference championship game, but they have to beat us too. And even if we were on opposite sides, we'd still have to beat them in the championship game so it doesn't really matter.

So in 2016, our schedule will look like this (obviously not in this order) assuming they keep as many home/road alternating series as possible:

5 HOME GAMES

MSU

Probably Penn State

Rutgers/Maryland (no one should have to go to the East Coast twice in a season)

2 against West Division

4 AWAY GAMES

Ohio

Probably Indiana

Other one of Rutgers/Maryland

1 at West Division

Also, in 2016 M has open dates in Week 2 (9/10--vacated by ND) and in the middle of B1G season. Unless they move the Ball State game in Week 4 to Week 2, or schedule a B1G game early in the season, they will have to play 11 straight weeks.

"The trouble with quotes on the internet, is that it is often difficult to discern whether or not they are genuine" --Abraham Lincoln

I bet state will take offense to this quote: "In the first 18 years, you're going to see a lot of competition between teams at the top of either division," Delany said. "We call that a bit of parity-based scheduling, so you'll see Wisconsin, Nebraska and Iowa playing a lot of competition against Penn State, Ohio State and Michigan."

Because the Big 12 doesn't have even distribution of their media money Texas will make a lot more being in that conference, example Longhorn Network. Virginia is now out of the picture because of the ACC's new media stranglehold. It's more than likely that the expansion will come to a stop now.

A couple of issues. Much like the B10/SEC/P12, the B12 has an even Tier 1/2 media payout. The big difference is in the Tier 3 contracts. UT has, by far, the largest because of the LHN. Team like OU have a media payout compared to our BTN payout. The B10 teams further bid out their radio broadcast, coaches shows, and other media rights not pledged to the BTN. Michigan make an additional $7 million from their media deal with IMG. Not all schools get that kind of money.

To say that the B10 distributes it's media money evenly is a misnomer. The only difference is that the B10 consolidates their tier 3 into the BTN while Texas sells it on by themselves.

As far as expansion goes, The B10 sat at 11 teams for 20 years until UML was admitted. They can wait until the B12/ACC GoRs runs out in 10/12 years. I actually think that if B12 teams like Kansas were wanting to go, they would go a few years early. The reduction of media rights wouldn't really be that big of deal at that point.

Tradition is something you can't bottle. But it is there to sustain you when you need it most. I've called upon it time and time again.

but how do we know Ohio still be a home game in the 4 game home conference slate? They're in the East as well, so will have the same 5/4 timing as us. I'm guessing this just assumes they won't switch it up from the current cycle?

It is an assumption, but a pretty good one. I don't see any way the Big Ten could give one team back to back home games in The Game. Probably the same way with Michigan-MSU. Michigan has had Ohio at home on odd years since 1901. Michigan has had MSU at home on even years since 1968.

And seeing we play Penn State this year on the road, I have a hard time seeing the Big Ten giving us another road game against PSU in 2014, meaning Michigan should get PSU at home in even years (which is the way it has been for most of the time since PSU entered the conference).

contiguous in terms of geography, even though the Atlanta and Texas markets make sense. I still think Notre Dame and Kansas make the most sense from a cultural, geographic and athletics perspective, even though Kansas doesn't make much TV market sense (Kansas City, meh). Those two would increase basketball strength, as we'll be falling behind the ACC with their addition of Syracuse and Pitt.

UVa and ND would also make sense. ND to the west for competitive balance and making it a more Chicago-Minneapolis centric division, with the East being the more Detroit-Ohio-NY-Washington-Baltimore division. ND's non-conference schedule could have USC, Stanford and Navy, they'd play Purdue every year and would rotate UM and MSU frequently. They'd also get natural games in NY and DC once it a while, and ND games against Illinois, Indiana, and Northwestern (not to mention Wisconsin and Nebraska) have to look attractive to the TV networks as well.

"Is there enough magic out there in the moonlight to make this dream come true?"

As long as the ACC remains viable and willing to let ND sit in on its non-football sports, there's no reason for ND to change their current situation. ND gets to maintain its exclusive TV contract and the illusion of independence while still having a league home for their other sports. ND fits well with the Big 10 but ND alums are adamant that it not happen. They're far more likely to go all in with the ACC than join the Big 10.

Delaney really, really screwed himself when he let the ACC take Syracuse, Pitt (and then ND later), leaving him with the embarrassing scraps of Rutgers and MD. Syracuse would have delivered the same TV market and occasional Meadowlands games as Rutgers. Pitt is a big market unto itself, and with those two in tow Rutgers and MD wouldn't have looked so bad.

We could have an East division (A B1G East, if you will) of UM, MSU, Ohio, Pitt, PSU, Syracuse, Rutgers and Maryland, tossing both Indiana schools over into the West. Then we'd be done; we wouldn't be assimilated in the northeast by the ACC (they would still only have lonely Boston College), and at that point who cares where ND goes. What an epic failure.

Maybe we can get Missouri to bounce around over to us. Or Kansas and/or Kentucky. Our only options are looking like we're headed toward claiming that Delaney is dedicated to becoming the nation's best basketball conference.

"Is there enough magic out there in the moonlight to make this dream come true?"

Why do we need to expand at all? Besides the "fact" that it's supposedly inevitable for there to be four 16-team conferences . . . how does it actually benefit the B1G to have two more teams?

The addition of Nebraska gave us the lucrative B1G Championship Game, as well as another traditional power, so it made sense.

The additions of Rutgers and Maryland gave us a toehold in two huge markets, which apparently will increase our TV rights enough to offset the splitting of the pie 15 ways instead of 13 (the league office gets a cut). So I guess it makes sense.

Additional TV money or getting a program that is represented nationwide. That's why the ACC did the power move of killing the media rights and the Big East teams that were worth getting are gone. The big ten got caught with a thumb up there ass.

It's pretty tough at this point to get two more teams that would make the league more profitable with the revenue split 17 ways instead of 15. The law of diminishing returns is kicking in. Note that no conference has dared to go with more than 14 members for football.

The quality of Team 13 and 14 could have been better for the big 10 though. They should have stayed at 12, but when they made the decision to switch to 14 they drug their feet too long. Teams that they raise their nose at for decades would have been a better pick than what they picked up.

I would have to agree that I feel like the Big Ten missed the boat on quality teams to get. I personally wish they would have stayed with 12 teams, but when they reacted to adding 2 more it was far too late. If they were going to settle with okay programs they should have grabbed a hold of Missouri and Pitt. Then they could have used the excuse of adding Rutgers and Maryland as the 15th and 16th schools to even things up; in that scenario those two schools would have been an understandable addition.

Absolutely their goal is to get their type of arrogance going across coast to coast. With their two rivals in California and three of their ACC road games on the East Coast they can do that. It would be in their absolute least interest it to join the Big 10.

Adam Rittenberg had some quotes from Jim Delany on the rationale for some the placements, if anyone is interested. The full blog entry is (HERE).

The last sentence of his quote on why Michigan, Ohio State and/or Penn State or even Michigan State were not in the West, aside from geography, is intriguing:

"Michigan State's a good football program, but it wasn't going to make things equal competitively. It may have had an effect. It depends upon what you think Michigan State and Purdue will do over the next decade."

So, it may not matter which division State is in apparently, or at least may matter less in the mind of the Big Ten. Actually, competitive balance was the third priority this time, according to Delany, and he als describes the process in the first attempt as well where it was the first priority. They seeded teams and then split them based on recent history to form the Leaders and Legends initially. It seems like they made a similar consideration this time, but also Michigan, Ohio State and Penn State were very strongly in favor of a straight geographic division.

In the entry, he also talks about the debate between 9 and 10 game conference schedules as well, which apparently was an issue at various meetings. Interesting stuff.

"Funny isn't it, how naughty dentists always make that one fatal mistake."

So does anybody think the "parity based scheduling" for cross-overs is stupid? The B1G already has a bad image from bowl games, and now they're purposefully going to make the best teams play each other more often than crappy team? Sure, it makes for better games, but it also increases the chances of a mid-level team slipping into a high level bowl game to which they will be over matched because the big boys are busy hurt each other's records.

I think you completely mis-read the post. Delano said they will purposefully make the cross-overs so that the top teams from each division play each other more often. This sets up for the best teams to have depressed records because they will have to play artificially (not luck based) more difficult schedules. This has nothing to do with divisional alignment. The SEC does not do this. They do not purposefully schedule Bama, LSU and A&M to play UF, UGA, and SCar every year and let the middle/bottom teams get a pass.

That makes no effing sense unless the goal is to try to make it more difficult for B1G teams to play for the national championship. It sounds like the kind of demand a whiny school who complained about being in the more difficult division would make.

Yeah. This was exactly my thought. It like they're trying to keep the biggest brands down when the B1G is already suffering a major image problem. I don't think this is a conspiracy or anything, but probably just a mis-guided attempt to get 'better' games. I only think it hurts the B1G in he end though.

Play the 5 in your division and half (3 teams) in the other divisions.

“True loyalty is that quality of service that grows under adversity and expands in defeat. Any street urchin can shout applause in victory, but it takes character to stand fast in defeat. One is noise — the other, loyalty.”

Because if you don't play nine games then an entire class will not play another team in the conference. So Michigan would play Wisconsin every five to six years. You would have a class from freshman to senior year that would never play against Wisconsin.

That's not really true. If you play 8 games with a 14 team league then you play 6 division and 2 non-division games every year. Which means that you do play every single team every 3.5 years so with a 4 year player's career they would see every other school. The only way you don't see all of the other teams in 4 years if you repeat home and away with schools over 3 years rather than just playing one or the other and then playing different schools the next year.

It is true that you would not travel to other schools during each players career you wind up only playing 4 road games against those 7 teams in 4 years so they never get to visit 3 of those other 7 schools. Though I can't think of a reason that not visiting another campus really matters as they don't do much more than play and hang out at the hotel on road trips.

With the possibility of only having 4 home games in a season, I think that it probably means that we are done scheduling road games in the non conference schedule every other year. This also probably means more games against MAC foes at the Big House, since money talks.

On a personal note.... I enjoy road trips West more than road trips East... I really enjoy taking over Northwesterns Stadium on a fall day and was hoping to eventually make it to Camp Randall stadium and the long trek to Nebraska.

CJK5H - allegedly....

"Alright guys, I'm not gonna lie to you. This is gonna get kind of weird.... Two Dragons"

Though UM would have a inter-division game every year against OSU while half of the north would not play OSU in a particular season...so MSU, PSU, NU or WI could ease into a division title at times.

Even though the East at this point in time and for the foreseeable future will be the dominate division, I like that the way to the big 10 championship will be through the Michigan - OSU game.

In a few years it will be the far more better game then the B1G championship game. It may come to the point where the winner of the UM-OSU game will rest their starters in the B1G championship game so that they will be fresh for the NC playoff run!